March i6, 1922] 



NATURE 



361 



Calendar of Industrial Pioneers. 



{March i6, 1864. Richard Roberts died. — A man of 



/■ention, whose genius did not save him from 



late poverty, Roberts was the son of a Welsh 



smaker. He worked at various trades in different 



of England, and in 1816 settled in Manchester, 



;re he made improvements in engineers' machine 



)ls, such as planing machines, and in textile 



jhinery. His self-acting mule was patented in 1825. 



larch "16, 1908. William Petrie died. — Sent at the 



of nineteen to study at Frankfort -on -Main, 



'etrie devoted himself to electricity and magnetism, 

 and in 1847 invented one of the first self -regulating 

 arc lamps, which in the following year was displayed 

 from the portico of the National Gallery. His 

 efforts proving financially unsuccessful Petrie turned 

 his attention to the management and equipment of 

 chemical works. 



March 17, 1806. David Dale died. — A notable Scotch 

 industrialist, Dale began life as a Paisley weaver. He 

 gained a fortune, however, as an importer of yarn, 

 and in 1783, by the establishment of spinning mills at 

 New Lanark, founded the cotton industry of Lanark- 

 shire. 



March 17, 1887. William Denny died. — The son of 

 Peter Denny, one of the founders of the Dumbaiton 

 firm of shipbuilders and marine engineers, Wilham 

 Denny was one of the most scientific naval architects 

 of his day, and at his Leven shipyard constructed 

 the first privately-owned experimental tank, over 

 which he placed an inscription to Froude, " The 

 greatest of experimenters and investigators of hydro- 

 dynamics." 



"March 18, 1899. Sir Douglas Strutt Gallon died.— 

 A captain in the Royal Engineers, Galton did valuable 

 work in connection with the application of iron to 

 railways, structures, and the laying of the Atlantic 

 cable, and was well known for his writings on sanitary 

 science. He held various public offices, was made 

 an honorary member of the Institution of Civil 

 Engineers, and in 1895 served as president of the 

 British Association. 



March 19, 1888. Thomas Russell Crampton died. — 

 An assistant to Gooch in the Great Western Rail- 

 way, Crampton in 1848 set up in business for him- 

 self, and in that year constructed the locomotive 

 " Liverpool," one of the most powerful engines of 

 the time. It embodied many special features and 

 was adopted as the type of locomotive for some of 

 the French railways. Cram.pton also laid the first 

 practical submarine cable from Dover to Calais, 

 and with Fox carried out the Berlin water-works. 



March 21, 1888. Ludwig August Colding died. — From 

 the Polytechnic School at Copenhagen Colding passed 

 into the public service and became an inspector 

 of roads. While thus engaged, in 1843 he wrote 

 his " Theses concerning Moving Forces," a paper 

 which entitles him to a place among the founders 

 of thermodynamics. He published other scientific 

 memoirs and rose to be chief engineer of Copenhagen. 



March 21, 1914. August Wohler died. — One of the 

 earliest and most distinguished of Prussian railway 

 engineers and a pioneer in the testing of materials, 

 Wohler began his investigations on railway axles in 

 1852, and in 1859 estabUshed at Berlin an experi- 

 mental station for the testing of iron and steel under 

 repeated stresses. 



March 22, 1831. William Symington died. — The 

 maker of the first practical marine steam engines, 

 Symington by his work for Patrick Miller in 1788 

 and for the Earl of Dundas in i8oi solved the problem 

 of driving boats by steam, but failing to obtain 

 support for his projects he sank into poverty and 

 died. in London a disappointed man. He is buried 

 in St? Botolph's, Aldgate. E. C. S. 



NO. 2733, VOL. 109] 



Societies and Academies. 



London. 

 Geological Society, February 17. — Mr. R. D. Oldham, 

 president, in the chair. — R. D. Oldham : The cause and 

 character of earthquakes (Anniversary Address) . The 

 term " earthquake " is here applied only to a disturb- 

 ance which can be felt, and as such, it is a form of 

 elastic wave-motion of extreme complexity ; this may 

 be distinguished as the orchesis of the earthquake. In 

 addition there is, in some cases, a molar, permanent 

 displacement of the solid rock, which forms the 

 mochleusis, which is probably the secondary result 

 of a more deep-seated disturbance, which has been 

 distinguished as the bathyseism. The origin of the 

 elastic wave-motion must be a sudden disturbance 

 not more than ten miles down, and in this outer 

 portion of the earth's crust the only sudden disturb- 

 ance conceivable is fracture. In certain cases such 

 fracture, accompanied or not by displacement, has 

 been recognised at the surface, and measurements 

 of the displacements show that a state of strain 

 must have existed before actual rupture took place, 

 but give no indication of the rate of growth of the 

 strain. This problem can only be attacked through 

 the variation in the frequency of earthquakes, and 

 only one existing record, the Italian one, is available. 

 From this the rate of growth of strain is, at slowest, 

 such that the breaking- point will, on the average, be 

 reached in a year at most, and, at the quickest, may 

 be of such rapidity as to be analogous to a separate 

 explosion for each earthquake. Changes producing 

 such, strains are probably to be referred to the 

 material below the crust. Researches on the change 

 of bulk resulting from a change in the mineral 

 aggregation of the same material indicates one means 

 by which the effect may be brought about. The 

 cause of the great majority of earthquakes is a rapid 

 growth of strain, due to changes in the material 

 underlying the outer crust of soUd rock. 



February 22. — Prof. A. C. Seward, president, in 

 the chair. — C. W. Andrews : Description of a new 

 Plesiosaur from the Weald Clay of Berwick (Sussex). 

 The parts preserved are the posterior region of the 

 skull, numerous cervical and dorsal vertebrae, the 

 shoulder girdle, and the humeri. The bones lay 

 mixed up, in an intensely hard matiix. The 

 skull is very imperfect : it resembles the skull of 

 Plesiosaurus capensis, Andrews, from the Uitenhage 

 Series of South Africa. The cervical vertebrae are 

 also very similar to those of the African species, 

 having the central portion of the articular surfaces 

 deeply cupped ;' they have also inter- vertebral discs, 

 possibly of calcified cartilage, between successive 

 centra. The clavicular arch in the shoulder girdle 

 is large and well developed, being very similar to 

 that of some Lower Liassic forms. The retention 

 of this primitive condition in this and other Wealden 

 Plesiosaurs may be the consequence of their com- 

 paratively sheltered life in a fluviatile or estuarine 

 habitat. The name Leptocleidus superstes is sug- 

 gested for the specimen. — T. Landell-Mills, A. Smith 

 Woodward, and A. Gilligan : The Carboniferous 

 rocks of the Deer-Lake district of Newfoundland. 

 The Carboniferous rocks form a synclinal flexure 

 with its longer axis trending north-east and south- 

 west. Underlying these is a Hmestone series of un- 

 determined age resting on highly-folded gneisses and 

 schists of Archaean age. A thick mantle of Pleistocene 

 deposits covers ' the whole region, but deeply- 

 trenched valleys give good exposures of the Carboni- 

 ferous rocks. Fishes and plant-remains occur abun- 

 dantly at several horizons in the Lower Carboniferous 

 shales, but no fossils have been found in the Upper 



